This invention relates to improved walkers for use by invalids or others requiring support when walking.
Many conventional walkers are very bulky and difficult to transport from place to place, and cannot be reduced in size for such transportation, or adjusted to different widths for use by persons of different sizes. Some have been devised which allow a width adjustment, such as for example the arrangement shown in U.S. Pat. No. 2,734,554, but the types of folding connections utilized for this purpose have been of a character detracting very substantially from the strength and rigidity of the overall walker structure in use, and thereby materially decreasing the practicability of the device for its intended purpose. Another type of collapsible walker is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,442,276, but that arrangement does not allow an effective width adjustment of the walker, and again would appear to provide inadequate strength of the assembled unit.
Another disadvantage of previously proposed walkers resides in the difficulty in so constructing the walkers as to bring the lower ends of their support legs into a common plane for simultaneous engagement with a floor surface. This problem of attaining precisely identical leg length has been especially compounded when legs are adjustable, in which case accurate setting of the leg lengths in all of the different adjusted positions is difficult to attain without greatly increasing the cost of the overall item.